Today we really got down and dirty. In the morning we got into the backreefs which was beyond the mangroves on the other side of Middle Caye. So we had to waddle through the mangroves, making sure to shuffle our feet to avoid stingray stings. Reaching the backreefs, initially I felt sad seeing that the reefs were much smaller than the ones in the patch reef areas which we have been snorkeling in the past few days. However, after snorkeling around for a little bit, I feel like a huge reason for that was probably because of the stronger currents in the open ocean. That said, I became impressed at how life can survive even in these harsh conditions.
We were supposed to look around to study the host preference of Christmas tree worms (Spirobranchus giganteus) in the backreef, which suits me perfectly as it was my taxon group! However, we completed the study quickly as there weren’t that many worms about.
After the backreef study, we came back for lunch and had a presentation on marine debris. Which led us to our land activity of the day: picking up trash around the coastal areas of Middle Caye and doing a project on the types of trash found. In half an hour, the 11 of us managed to pick up 38 kg of trash around the coast. There was trash of all types, from plastic bottles (a lot of them) to Styrofoam to McDonald toys and Lego pieces. I’m glad that we did this and helped (however much slightly) make this island a better place.
At night, because of the strong currents, we did not do night snorkeling. Instead, Scott and Adrienne set up naval lamps by the dock and we sat there to observe the fishes that were attracted to the light. It was fascinating to see the different species that come out at night that I don’t see in the day and definitely mesmerizing fishwatching and stargazing at the same time. Kind of sad that we have to leave this island in a couple of days… In any case, I’m done for today.
This morning we were hoping to take the boat out and snorkel on the atoll’s forereef, but the sea was a bit too rough for that, so we went to a small patch reef on the other side of Middle Caye. The water was shallow enough for us to leave our fins on shore and walk in the water with our masks on. We looked to see if Christmas Tree worms on the reef preferred to burrow into certain corals. After lunch, we analyzed the data and found inconclusive results.
On the reef I spotted, with Jordan’s help, one Condylactis gigantea, a Giant Caribbean Anemone, burrowed in a rock. I did not see any more of my marine taxa in our brief jaunt in the water today.
After our worm examination, I gave the class my lecture on marine debris, which doesn’t get any less sad the more I look at it. After the lecture, we followed up with a cleanup of the beaches and mangroves of the island. We only spent thirty minutes as a group cleaning, but we collected over 2000 pieces of plastic and almost 40 kilograms of trash. Nobody litters on this island, so all of this trash washed up here from ocean currents, which is crazy to think of considering we only scratched the surface of the island’s trash today.
After our trash experiment, we got to have free time for the rest of the day. We went out to the dock at night, where we spotted an American Crocodile (Crocodylus acutus) in the water near the shore. Although there was no soccer today, we did play beach volleyball, which was fun despite how bad I was at it. I have thoroughly enjoyed the free time that we’ve gotten over the past two days. It is really nice to enjoy all this island has to offer outside of biology and to spend time relaxing in paradise.
Today was similar to the previous day in terms of the diving activities, as we redid the patch reef data collection and sea urchin collection on an area outside of the marine protection zone. We then compared the two data sets, analyzed them based on our project hypothesis and came up with a final poster to showcase our results.
My first takeaway of the day was how adorable sea urchins are. After seeing how they move about using their spines, my perception of them changed completely. And having to handle and measure them also made me like them so much more. Just see the picture below to see how close we’ve gotten.
Black sea urchin (Diadema antillarum) on my back!
It was also fun surveying another patch reef area, and after the experience from the previous day, I was much more confident with collecting data and also identifying organisms in general. Below are some of the creatures I managed to capture (with my camera)!
It’s a Christmas Tree Worm (Spirobranchus giganteus)!
There were Christmas tree worms everywhere!!! And I saw a new mollusk species which I have never seen personally, the Cyphoma gibbosum (flamingo tongue shell):
Flamingo tongue (Cyphoma gibbosum) right in the middle
Exciting times. I’m looking forward to the next few days because we will get to check out other reef types such as the backreefs and forereefs, and I’m eager to see how different they will be from path reefs.
After snorkeling, we spent the afternoon analyzing our data and creating our poster to present to Adrienne and Scott. And then right before dinner we had a friendly pickup game with some of the island staff. Got to sweat it all out! I have to say, Alessi is pretty tenacious when it comes to fighting for the ball, and Therese and Isaac are great technical players. Meanwhile, Deepu is definitely the star striker like Cristiano Ronaldo, scoring 2 of the goals for us. This is my brief analysis of EBIO 319’s soccer team.
All in all, today went by really quickly and I thoroughly enjoyed both the snorkeling experience and the free time to mingle with the other people in Middle Caye. Looking forward to more tomorrow!
I lie on my back on the hammock, swaying gently side-to-side in the breeze. My eyelids float down after a busy morning and afternoon. I witness deep oranges and rusty reds shifting, bursting, and intertwining on the backs of my eyelids, luminescent projections of the intense tropical sunlight. Needless to say, these entrancing visions were enough to lull me to sleep.
This morning I felt quite different – energized and adventurous. Soon after breakfast, my classmates and I measured the sizes of the urchins we caught yesterday at the Marine Protected Area (MPA). We then snorkeled at a non-MPA and carefully collected urchins there. Interestingly, the urchins tended to be larger and more numerous at the MPA. However, the non-MPA was home to the largest urchin we found, a long spine sea urchin (Diadema antillarum) that measured 5.8 cm in diameter.
With its mounds of different corals, the reef visited today was teeming with a plethora of diverse colorful creatures. Some notable sightings included a green sea urchin (Lytechinus variegatus), spiny brittle stars (Ophiocoma paucigranulata), and numerous ctenophores. The green sea urchin was about 4 inches in diameter and found on the seafloor. The spiny brittle stars, found under rubble, had central disks of about an inch in diameter and arms about 3 inches long. The brittle stars would try to move back under the rubble when exposed. None of the echinoderms were visibly interacting with other organisms. Today’s most spectacular sighting was a spotted trunkfish (Lactophyrus bicaudalis); its dynamic black and white speckles contrasted with the mellow blue backdrop of the ocean.
After spending the afternoon discussing my class’ data collected and observations noted, I was exhausted. We had an hour until dinner, so I lied on my back on the hammock.
Another day, another adventure. Right after breakfast, we counted our sea urchins from yesterday and then hit the water once again. We released our urchins from yesterday and then motored over to another patch reef, this time one in an unprotected marine area. We performed more transect surveys here in the same fashion as yesterday, collected more urchins, and came back to analyze all of our data from the past two days after lunch. This took us three hours, but we received good reviews on our work. We found a lot more urchins in the protected reef.
On the reef, I only spotted more Parazoanthus parasiticus zoanthids on the same vase sponge species, but didn’t manage to spot any other members of my taxon group in the water today. I did, however, see tons of flamingo tongues, which provide a stark color contrast with their environments and have beautiful colors (pictures to come later when we return to strong wifi). Our group also saw a nurse shark lounging under a rock. To cap off a nice day in the water, I handled a Diadema sea urchin a bit recklessly and currently have two tiny spine fragments in my right hand to show for it. The joys of the sea are endless.
Flamingo tongueBefore it poked me
After wrapping up our research for the day, we had an hour of free time. Damian, Deepu, Alessi, Therese and I got a game of beach soccer going with a couple of the guys working on Middle Caye right now, which was a ton of fun and left me so sweaty that I probably looked like I had just come out of the ocean. There’s nothing like a small-sided pickup soccer game to get me going, though. I also spoke a bit of creole with some of the people here, as the Belizean dialect is very similar to the Jamaican dialect that I speak. All in all, today was a great day for research and personal enjoyment.
We began the day by continuing our comparison of reef health in the marine protected zone and the non-protected zone by measuring the urchins we had collected the day before. As a group, we collected 144 in the protected area. After, we performed another graudrat and transect experiment on a reef outside of the protected zone. There was definitely more sea grass and macro algae present in this region then in the protected area. The benthos was covered in red coralline algae and there were lots of Ctenophores (cone jellies) floating around. One jelly road around on my mask for a while. When we collected urchins from this reef, we were only able to find and extract 60 urchins. While snorkeling around the reef, I saw my first nurse shark of the vacation hidden under the coral. I also saw lots of worms and brittle stars while searching for the urchins.
While on the reef, I saw a large number of herbivorous fish. For the first time on this vacation, I saw the terminal phase of the Sparisoma Viridi (the stoplight parrot fish) and Chaetodon Striatus (Banded butterfly fish). I continued to see all the other herbivorous fish mentioned in previous blog posts. In the Non-MPA reef, the fish tended to be bigger especially the parrot fish and the blue tangs. I believe that this is primarily due to the fact that this reef was deeper than the MPA reef. This was also the first time, I saw a school of Blue tangs and surgeon fish swimming around the reef picking macro algae.
After our experiment, we ate lunch and began our poster write up for the experiment. It turned into a 4-hour long catastrophe. Our final project turned out pretty good, but the road to getting there had many ups and downs involving many calculation errors. Let’s just say that basic arithmetic does not mix well with the heat and high levels of exhaustion. I have never laughed more about math in my life.
After, dinner we listened to presentations on green, red, and brown algae. One of our marine safety officers gave a talk on Belizean culture that was very interesting. Finally, I gave my presentation on the factors affecting coral reefs today and in the future.
Today we completed our MPA vs. General Use Zone comparison by doing quadrat coral cover assessments and urchin collecting on a patch reef in the General Use Zone. It was a lot easier today because conditions were calmer. During the urchin collection, I finally saw Sailor’s Eye Algae! I couldn’t find it again when I went to take a picture, but they look like big shiny bubbles. I also was able to find good examples of calcium carbonate Halimeda chips within the sand.
Some sand grains of algal origin produced by this Halimeda algae.
Today we also listened to a presentation by Javier, our marine safety officer, about the history and culture of Belize. He told us that the four main ethic groups of Belize, the Mestizos, Creoles, Garifunas, and Mayans, were all represented within the staff on Middle Caye, which is only comprised of six people!
The first lowlight of today was that I realized that I am trash at arithmetic when synthesizing our data. The second lowlight was that I realized there had been a frog in my Cheerios box after a frog jumped out of my Cheerios box. Truthfully I hadn’t been getting hungry enough in between meals to be eating them much and they were kind of a jank flavor, but it grossed me out nonetheless.
Some of the urchin size data we were trying to make sense of. Math is hard.
Weather permitting, tomorrow we are going to go snorkel on the reef crest and maybe also do a night dive. I am really excited to see different reef scenery now, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
Today was so much better, and yes, I have indeed survived!
We started the day with a lesson on field sampling, and we were taught how to use the quadrat that we made the night before, together with a transect, to get rudimentary field data. It was a nice touch the way we were taught, where we started with a case study on land, before moving to a case study in the nearby seagrass, and finally to a patch reef area which we have to take a boat to. From each case study, we reflected on the problems that popped up, and constantly refined our technique to make the case study more focused each time, and also make the data collection method more accurate. This is how engineers design our systems too! Using iterations of testing and refinement to finally reach a satisfactory end product.
From chasing down hermit crabs in the morning, I moved to avoiding interesting looking inverted green jellyfish right before lunch. I certainly preferred the latter as at least I got to finally see organisms in my taxon! And I definitely felt myself getting better at snorkeling and in general being more comfortable in the aquatic environment. Below are pictures of organisms from my taxon group that I saw in the seagrass:
Mollusc I foundBad photo of bearded fireworm on the pier.
I was particularly excited to see the bearded fireworm (Hermodice carunculata) as I was expecting it to be swimming around among corals, and not sticking itself to the side of the dock! It looked really gorgeous though I’m well aware of its danger. Actually “though” shouldn’t be the right word to use here as those two things do come together frequently.
After the seagrass experience, we had lunch, and got ready for the second dive. We decided to study the distribution of corals in patch reefs, and counted the amount of live stony corals, dead stony corals, soft corals, sponges, and sand areas in each quadrat sample. Adrienne convinced us to separate the corals into two groups and also to identify sponges though it clearly wasn’t part of the study. Little did we know… it was all part of the grand scheme of things which will be revealed later!
Anyway, after doing the study, I saw more creatures that are part of my taxon groups! Here are some pictures for my eager fans:
A Christmas Tree Worm (Spirobranchus giganteus) on a coral.A Star Horseshoe Worm (Pomatostegus stellatus) right in the middle.
Yes, that is what you think it is. It is the beautiful Christmas tree worm!!! The one that I wanted to see so much. It actually took a while for us to become friends and it retracted into the coral that it was perched on when I went in for a closer look, and took its own sweet time to come back out to say hi.
With that, I’ve seen 3 of the 9 species of annelids found in Glover’s reef. I’m gonna find them all!
After that, we went sea urchin catching. It felt like hide and seek except when you find and catch the hiding ones, they prick you. Not that painfully though, and I managed to catch 4 of these little pin cushions. Proof that I actually caught one of them is below:
I caught this cute little sea urchin
After dinner, we had a guest lecturer called Dr. Alex Tewfik who talked to us about his work in Glover’s Reef. He talked about the importance of sponges in the coral ecosystem and how they may have been overlooked in the past and may actually be the key to completing the food web in this ecosystem. Adrienne then referenced the earlier case study when we were only going to count corals but were suggested to count sponges too, and how these additional data often can turn out to be useful. That was cool how she tied it back to what we learned in the day!
Oh by the way, as I am sitting down typing this right now, I feel like I am still on the boat, as I feel the drifting sensation in my mind even as I am sitting down here. Kind of disorientating, but kind of interesting too! And it’s been a long day, so I shall end here for now.
Till next time,
Damien the slightly-improved snorkeler
Today was my first day snorkeling and it was quite an experience. My only snorkeling experience before this was in the Rice Recreation Center swimming pool and that is definitely not even close to what we went through today.
Before analyzing my snorkeling experience, I will go through chronologically the events that led up to it. I woke up at 5am (!), and we had a quick PB&J breakfast before heading to the dock to take a boat to Glover’s Reef. From the dock, the journey to Glover’s Reef took about 2.5 hours. While it was long, it was fascinating to see some of the things that I have been learning so much about, such as the reef crest and atoll formation. It was obvious when we were entered the lagoon of Glover’s Atoll, as the water became really shallow and the captain of the ship had to navigate carefully to avoid hitting reefs or accidentally running the boat ashore.
Looks like the start of something beautiful.
After some careful navigation in the lagoon, we reached Middle Caye, which is where the Glover’s Atoll research station is located. Middle Caye is a quaint little island with a very rustic feel to it. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of self-sustainability the island community had integrated into their daily lives, with a wind turbine and a solar panel array to generate electricity, recycling toilets named Clivus, and desalination facilities as a few examples of this.
Solar panel array looks magnificent.
Walking around the island, I was reminded of a video game that I used to play back before college, Assassin’s Creed Black Flag, which is an action game set back during the Golden Age of Piracy. A huge part of the game was spent exploring atoll islands such as this, hunting iguanas and finding dead pirate skeletons on lush tropical sandy beaches, so strolling around the island definitely took me back a little bit to my younger days.
What I think I look like in my mind.
Pardon me for digressing! And let me continue with the rest of the day. After settling in on the island, we finally got to snorkel! Getting into the ocean waters was reprieve from the sweltering weather, and we edged our way out into the open ocean, swimming to the closest patch reef that we could find. And having not seen coral reef systems in person before, I have to say, IT WAS BEAUTIFUL!!! The ecosystem is so vibrant as expected, and while floating on the surface I stared in awe at the creatures just minding their own business and milling in and out of the crevices created by the corals. I saw fishes that I couldn’t name (though I found out thereafter that I had at least seen parrotfishes and surgeonfishes), I saw a spiny lobster which was part of my partner’s taxon group, so that was great! I saw many corals of different sizes, which I would get to know in much more detail in the afternoon courtesy of Adrienne’s passionate tour of Middle Caye’s coral graveyard. After the snorkel trip, I was handed a shell from Adrienne, which I believe is a triton and belongs to my taxonomic group.
Looking back, while the coral reefs were really fascinating to explore, it would have been much better if I knew what I was doing. Then again, it comes with experience and I am looking forward to the next few days with renewed hope. I’ll let y’all know how it goes in the next few days.
“Preservation of wildlife populations depends on changing human behavior.” Alex Tewfik, an expert benthic biologist, had this quote on one of his final slides during a presentation he gave our class.
A change in human behavior can mean many different things. I made an active choice to disrupt my busy summer work routine to engage in an explorative field biology trip, something that strongly deviates from my status quo.
This change has been engrossing. Through today’s endeavors – exploring a nearby seagrass bed and a patch reef accessible by boat – I immersed myself in the rich aquatic diversity only tropical marine ecosystems can offer.
I encountered a variety of species, including a beaded sea cucumber (Euapta lappa), about six inches in length, concealed by seagrass and a large West Indian sea egg (Tripneustes ventricosus) resting on a seagrass bed. Neither were in motion nor interacting with other animals. At the further patch reef, I came across a small chocolate brittle star (Ophioderma cinereum), a large-polyp coral (Eugmilia fastigata), and a donkey dung sea cucumber (Holothuria Mexicana), just under a foot long. The brittle star was found under rubble, and the donkey dung was found in deeper water on the seafloor. Today’s most noteworthy site was a school of surgeonfish (Genus Acanthus) swimming in a school of about one hundred fish.
My class also collected urchins from the reef. Urchins often hide under ridges or rocky overhangs, making them difficult to spot. After scouring for an urchin, I noticed an odd juxtaposition of hues – tiny white rings encircling fiery orange spines projecting from a dark fleshy body. This was the first of three (Echinometra viridis) I collected from the reef. Tomorrow, my class will be recording each urchin’s dimensions and returning them to the sea.
Echinometra viridis
I realize my participation on this trip will not accelerate the “preservation of wildlife populations.” However, for my own personal commitment to preservation causes and my proactivity to advocate for them, this trip has been transformative.
