Today was our last day on the island :,( we did our last snorkel this morning, and tomorrow we head back to the mainland for the second half of our expedition. Each day feels like many, but then the week passed in the blink of an eye.

At 8:00AM, after breakfast, we suited up for the last time in our snorkel gear to head out on a mission to collect our last data point in the ongoing TFB research question: what is the association between live coral cover and the abundance of sea urchins on patch reefs within and outside of the Marine Protected Area of Glovers Reef Atoll?

We headed to the second non-MPA patch reef for our last transect/quadrat data collection. Our last reef science hurrah. Scott caught one more lionfish (making 3 in total of the invasive species soon to be ceviche). After our data collection was done, we went to one more MPA reef within the atoll for one last free snorkel. While the wind and waves were intense, it was a nice experience. I came across a handful more queen conchs (Strombus gigas), one milk conch (Strombus stratus), and one Amber penshell (Pinnea carnea). Everyone but me it seems got to see one or multiple Caribbean reef squids (Sepioteuthis sepioidea).

We made a poster with our analyzed data (see picture), and then after lunch, I presented my taxon lecture on mollusks (on the last day, after we’d seen all the mollusks we could have possibly seen). For dinner, they had fried conch, meaning I got to taste my taxon! It tasted like crab cakes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

After dinner, we dissected the 3 lion fish we had collected through the week, identifying the sex, weight, length, and last meal. (Ours was named appetizer)! And then Scott filleted the fish and we ate them as ceviche. It was my first time trying ceviche, and it honestly just tasted like lime. Would eat again!

This time on the island was honestly remarkable, and I can’t wait for the rainforest half of the trip (although I can’t see how it could be better than this)