As the days progress, the number of coffee mugs present at breakfast continues to increase. Today was Sunday, reef day 4, and it was packed full of activities. Breakfast was good as always, and I was among the people with a mug this morning, although it was tea, not coffee (not too much of a instant coffee fan). But! The mangos were back! We love the mangos! At breakfast, we were warned to take Dramamine to prepare for the boat rides if we get motion sick, so I took one asap, and I assume it worked because I didn’t end up feeding the fishes.
We took a boat out to a patch reef within the marine protected area at 8:00 AM, and it was gorgeous. I literally cannot describe the color of blue that the water is, but it’s breathtaking. At the reef, we continued our survey from yesterday, using a transect tape and a quadrat to measure live coral cover vs dead coral cover, and also collected and measured urchins again. I don’t understand how these people spot these urchins so easily, I only found one today and I couldn’t even get it off the rock it was attached to. We also caught another lion fish today!(We saw 5 throughout the day, but only that one was caught). This was definitely the best reef site we’ve surveyed so far. It was so lush with fish and large coral colonies, you could definitely tell the difference between it and the non-protected reef. Once we were done at that site, we moved on to another patch reef within the MPA, but it was significantly more shallow than the previous one, which made everything harder as wind and waves tried to push us over. That shallower reef was covered to a great degree in coral rubble, with only small sections of live coral. At both locations though, there was an immense amount of brown algae coverage/outbreak. It seemed like it was on everything. The second reef also was generally smaller, with a steep sloping drop of about 20 feet around the edges of the reef.
Today’s lectures were about green algae, crustaceans, and my lecture on coral reefs and climate change. They were moved up to 1:00pm (right after lunch) to make room for some guest speakers from the Belize Fisheries Service. As a speech kid, I felt like my presentation came through as impassioned, which I’d say is a success, and I think my delivery was on time with room for questions so that’s good too! All before 2pm!
after the presentations, we had free time with the option to partake in an optional free snorkel. While this trip is exhausting, when else will I have these opportunities to go snorkeling and see awesome creatures? So I went! During the free snorkel, I found 2 more species of mollusk that I had yet to see: an amber pen shell and a horse conch! (Still no picture, my camera is still broken sorry y’all!) I also came across a bunch more milk conchs and queen conchs in that area as well.
after that I took a quick shower, went to dinner, and then it was time for the guest speaker! As well as the fisheries guy, Raphael, one of the posted Belize Coast Guard men also talked to us about their goings on. The Glovers Reef Atoll is a world heritage site by the way!
overall, a productive day! I feel satisfied by it! Hopefully tomorrow we can go out to the fore reef, and maybe at some point we can actually get to do the night snorkel. We’ll see! I’ll update you on that tomorrow! See you then!