This morning when I woke up I found a tree frog hiding in the bathroom- funny how they were so well hidden in the rainforest and then here this guy was when I wasn’t even looking. He was an incredible jumper and managed to land on my shirt from the toilet even though he was less than an inch long. After we left the hotel, we drove into Belize City where we boarded the boat taking us to Glover’s Reef. It was a 3 hour boat ride which got quite turbulent after crossing over the barrier reef, but I enjoyed the sensation which was quite like a pirate ship amusement park ride.
When we got to the island, we got an orientation tour of the facilties. This place is amazing. It’s right on the beach by all the reefs, is a UNESCO world heritage site, and we have the place all to ourselves (well, along with the Belizean Coast Guard members stationed on the island to prevent illegal fishing). We went for our first two snorkels, which was quite chaotic with the wind and our lack of experience. My underwater paper fell off my clipboard, I kept almost being swept into the reef, and at one point me and my snorkel partner found ourselves accidentally several hundred meters from the group. We also had to trek/ run as fast as we could through the “mangroves of death” so called because of the horrifying amounts of mosquitos in there.
The good news is, I think my taxon group will be much easier to spot than amphibians were in the rainforest. Already, the crustaceans are coming on strong. The shoreline is covered in blue land hermit crabs and crabs. I’ve yet to see a crustacean in the ocean as we only really got a short amount of time in the water and most of it was spent learning how to take notes underwater, but the conditions are right for crustaceans so you can expect a lot more crab enthusiasm on my part!