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Day 9: Glover’s? I Barely Know Her!!

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We all work up around 5:40ish before packing up our things to say bye to land for a while. We ate breakfast in the dining room of the TEC and loaded up our things into the van where Eduardo helped up. We drove into Belize City, which looked completely different from the first time we’d seen it. We passed through the neighborhoods and shopping centers of the city before arriving at the marina where we met our captain and water safety officers, Javier and Rose. We loaded up the boat and started the sail to Glover’s.

One of the coolest part of this sail was watching the water change into every shade of blue as we went farther away from the mainland. We sailed for about 3 hours through the water and enjoyed watching the islands and mangroves pass by. The view was tranquil and a huge change from our previous views in the rainforest. We got the chance to talk to Rose, which was really cool because she has one of the coolest jobs.

Goodbye civilization!
The Patch Coral right off the dock

The water turned a beautiful vibrant turquoise as we entered the lagoon. We drove slowly over the water and could see the sand at the bottom clearly. We docked on the island and unloaded our stuff before getting to see the island. We had a great lunch and got to see our rooms before snorkeling out for the first time. We put on all our dive gear and paired up for our dive teams (I somehow got stuck with Elena I’m about to die in the ocean). We immediately almost stepped on a stingray, so we did great. We went out around the sea grass and a shallow reef to try on our gear, which was a lot of fun.

We got out of the water, showered, and ate a really great dinner with upside down pineapple cake. We went for our first rounds of lectures here with Veronica doing echinoderms and the microbial processes of coral reefs and Kristen doing hard corals. Afterwards, we made our quadrant Bichael using the pvc pipes and string so that we could use it for data collection tomorrow. Afterwards, we all spent time working on our notebooks before turning in.

Corallimorphs, Zoanthids, and Anemones seen today:

It was hard to tell them apart in the reef but I definitely saw a giant Caribbean Corallimorph about 200 ft from the dock in the reefs around the island, surrounded by hard coral. This was pretty expected as this depth is in its range.

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Day 11: Sea Hedgehogs

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I’m pretty sure that anyone reading my posts is kind of tired of me starting all of them with something like “OMG TODAY WAS SO AWESOME,” but seriously, today was so awesome, and I don’t even like the word awesome. It’s such a boring, generic word, but I can’t think of anything else that accurately sums up my feelings.

This morning, we headed out to the fore reefs (area outside of the lagoon) beside one of the cayes nearby, as well as a fore reef beside the island that we’re staying on. The fore reef was much deeper than the places we previously visited, maybe ~30 ft deep. The current was much stronger here than in areas we’d visited before, but I actually really enjoyed bobbing up and down on the waves (shout out to my dad for teaching me to swim)!

The benthos was covered with coral rubble, live hard and soft corals, and all forms of fish. If I listened carefully, I could hear colorful parrotfish crunching at the coral below. I spotted a southern stingray rippling along the floor and a Nassau Grouper, which is a highly protected endangered species of fish.   AhhhhHHH watching a healthy coral reef teeming with life makes the heart happy 🙂

Coral reefs make a great photo op!

After stuffing ourselves with homemade pizza for lunch, we headed out for my favorite part of the day: sea urchin collection! As the resident Echinodermata expert on this trip, I was kind of obliged to geek out about them. But really, sea urchins are so fascinating that I didn’t even have to pretend.

We headed out to the same shallow patch reef that we visited two days ago. This patch reef is inside what’s known as a Marine Protected Area, which is an area in which harvesting is prohibited but recreational activity is allowed. We got 25 minutes to search for and catch as many sea urchins as we could with the goal of comparing the urchins we found in the MPA to the ones we found later when we visited the non-MPA.

Those little guys were so hard to catch. They’re super spiny and like to hide in inaccessible reef crevices as well as under rocks. There’s a technique to catch them easily, but it requires extreme precision and lack of fear of stabbing oneself with a spine, neither of which I possess. You just have to reach in, grab a spine, and jerk sharply – but if you don’t dislodge the urchin on the first try, it’ll become almost impossible to grab. Its tube feet will reach out and suction to the rock when it senses danger.

I learned how to catch the urchins pretty quickly! I caught so many reef urchins and slate pencil urchins by turning over pieces of coral debris and picking them off the benthos below. They were adorable, especially the baby ones that were smaller than a centimeter in diameter!!

A bonus of turning over coral debris was that we found so many brittle stars, which are another type of Echinoderm. I know for sure that I saw at least 2 spiny ophiocomas and many Suenson’s brittle stars, but there were many others that I could not identify. They wriggled away and dropped their arms too quickly.

A tiny green brittle star that I couldn’t identify. 

I think the catch of the day was a West Indian Sea Egg that Claire found at the MPA patch reef. It was 9 cm in diameter and had a dark purple body covered with short white spines.

Here I am holding the West Indian sea egg that Claire found! Isn’t it cute?  What an egg. 

When we got back to the island and after we finished dinner and lectures, we raced crabs that we caught on the island! We dubbed it “Crab Derby,” or “Dermit Crab Race.” Each of us caught either a Caribbean Blue Crab or a hermit crab, lined them up, and let them race towards a finish line.

Once the starting time was called, there was a sudden cacophony of screams of encouragement as each of us egged on our crabs. I’m proud to announce that my hermit crab, Georgiano, won second place! He made me so proud :’)

I’ll be awake again bright and early for another packed day tomorrow, so good night!

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Day 10: Snorkeling is Probably My Favorite Thing Ever

I like a lot of things. Actually, I’m a little too obsessed with many things – I’ve always been the type of person who enjoys many hobbies and who uses said hobbies to procrastinate doing my actual work. But I think my actual favorite thing in the whole wide world is snorkeling.

We snorkeled for 3 or 4 hours today, and although I was soooo physically worn out, I could have gone for more. (Also, do you understand how amazing that is for me? I did rigorous physical activity for MULTIPLE HOURS and I WASN’T EVEN MAD AT IT?!?! I swear, if I lived on an island I’d have the beach bod of all beach bods.

The day started off with an excellent breakfast of cheese, fresh avocado, johnnycakes (biscuits but better), and fresh fruit. I think we’re all getting a little spoiled on the food here because it has been consistently delicious. AhhhHH

After filling up our fuel tanks, we met to practice a data collection technique that is commonly used by field ecologists to obtain random samples along a straight line section of an area. We used devices called quadrats, which are basically square grids that we made of plastic tubing a string, to sample small chunks of the ocean floor. Before getting into the water, we practiced laying out the transect tape (a huge tape measure that tells us the line along which we will measure) on land.

When we’d become sufficient at conducting transects on land, we moved to the water to practice. And when we became used to snorkeling while carrying 1058593 pieces of equipment, Scott deemed us ready to go conduct some real life transects on some patch reefs at a nearby island.

Today’s project aimed to compare the live hard coral coverage between Marine Protected Areas and non- Marine Protected Areas. We first stopped at a reef inside the MPA. We hopped off the boat into water that was the absolute perfect temperature for swimming. It was maybe 30 ft deep, but rapidly transitioned to being 2 or 3 ft deep once we hit the actual reef.

A beautiful coral formation I found at the patch reef!

After conducting our transects there, we had a little bit of free time to look around. I spent the time looking under rocks and in crevices for sea urchins. I actually found so many! There were all tucked away in dark areas so I didn’t dare to stick my finger in to try to pull them out. They were sooo cute, like little sea hedgehogs clinging to the rock faces. I LOVE MY TAXONOMIC GROUP WOW.

Scott picked up a baby one for me to see at the second reef we stopped at today. I think it’s Echinometra lucunter, a rock boring urchin. It crawled across my hand and waved its little tube feet at me. I think I cried a little because it was so frickin adorable.

If you look closely at my hands, you can see a tiny sea urchin! 🙂

Anyway, if you couldn’t tell already, I thoroughly enjoyed myself today. I just loved watching the bustling ecosystem beneath me, with soft corals waving in the current and tiny colorful fish darting between them. This is insane. I can’t wait to get back out tomorrow.

 

 

 

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Day 11: kylie jenner

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I woke up today with a swollen bottom lip, which I’ve never had before. I opted out of the morning snorkel because my lips were numb and my best guess was that I am allergic to the silicone in the snorkel.

I stayed in listening to music till about 11 am, when everyone came back. Apparently the seas were very choppy, and people were seasick. This snorkel was also not an official project, so I didn’t miss anything I had to note in my journal.

We had lunch, it was pizza and it was amazing. After a one hour rest, we headed out on the reef, and I came with this time. I opted to not use the snorkel, in case it was in fact an allergic reaction, and so went swimming with just my mask. This was actually a lot more fun than I expected, since it gave an edge to the breathing, and I had to calculate when would be the best time to take a breath. I actually enjoyed today’s snorkeling more than I did yesterday’s.

Me holding a brittle star while measuring urchins on the boat. PC: Chloe.

Today’s project was to look for sea urchins. I was not amazing at this, but did catch a few. I was mostly distracted by the green algae that I finally started seeing—and I once I saw one, I saw them all. I must’ve seen at least fifty or sixty independent colonies of Halimeda tuna. I also saw three Rhipocephalus phoenix in one corner of the reef, and two fans of Udotea flabellum.

Me looking uncomfortable while making our urchins+coral reef poster. PC: Sami

Apparently tomorrow will be at least partially dedicated to identification of algae, so I’m looking forward to my taxon’s spotlight.

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Day 10: psa coconuts can fall and kill you

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Today we went out on the boat and dove into the atoll, snorkeling in the real Caribbean ocean. After about three hours of practicing with our methodology, counting squares on the quadrat to determine proportions, we all piled into the boat and sailed away from our little island. About ten minutes away is another island, surrounded by patch reefs. We all dove in, holding our equipment, and were sent to explore the reef and collect data.

A stingray we saw gliding through the seagrass off the coast off our island. PC: Chloe

Diving from the boat into the water was one of the prettiest parts for me. As soon as you hit the water, you sink a few feet and all around is pure blue ocean. Sometimes you can see the bottom, twenty or thirty feet below you, and you feel suspended in mid-air, surrounded by nothing by cerulean water. This is the thermocline, where the passive margin that provides a shallow seafloor for the reef ecosystem drops off and is replaced by open ocean.

We collected data at two areas for comparison. The first one was distinctively shallower than the second. I was almost touching the corals right beneath me, and could stand up in the sand with half my body out. The second one was a lot deeper, the corals about seven feet down. This was a lot easier of an area to snorkel, though the data  collection was more difficult because we had to dive down to pick up our quadrats and transect tape. I attempted to dive down and was not particularly successful.

I didn’t take note of any green algae today. I saw a lot of what I thought might have been green algae, seaweed-like organisms anchored to the bottom of the sea, and I saw some non-calcified algae that clung to corals or rocks. But I didn’t identify any of them or take a very good, mainly because I was trying to get used to snorkeling. Tomorrow I’ll do a more thorough search for my taxon.

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Day 11: Belize can’t catch a break

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Today after breakfast,  Windolpho from the Belize Fisheries department came to talk to us about some of the work his department does. He told us about how Hondurans, much like the Guatemalans, come onto Belize lands (or oceans in this case) and take resources. While in in the Chiquibul, we learned that Guatemalans would come to Belize’s forests to take Xate leaves (a plant in high demand in the floral industry). Here in Glover’s Reef, Hondurans come to fish conch in mass quantities, with no respect to the fragile ecosystems that they are illegally exploiting.

Xate from the Chiquibul

We then got into our snorkel gear and went onto the boat to visit some new reef patches. The waves were pretty wild (Scott said that they were actually calm…) and lots of people felt sick. The second site was like the drop off from Finding Nemo, a coral reef that sloped off into a deep blue abyss that goes on for who knows how long. The deep clear blue was beautiful, but it was a little nerve wreaking to be floating over nothingness.

On the boat with Kristen, Claire and Sam

In the reef patch, I wasn’t able to dive to the benthos, which was at least 25-30 down or deeper. However, from the surface I was able to two stoplight parrotfish swimming near each other towards the base of a coral. One was using its parrot beak-like mouth to scrape algae off the coral. The other one just seemed to be hanging out. They looked about a foot long, at least from where I was looking. I also saw a blue tang at the top of a rock structure. It looked no bigger than 6 inches, but then again I was also pretty far up from it.

Stoplight parrotfish eating algae off corals
An aggregation of blue tang and various other types of surgeonfish

Lionfish is an invasive species in the Caribbean, meaning that they are native to the Indo-Pacific and were brought to this area by people who got them as pets and later released them in the wrong ocean. In Elena’s lecture later in the evening, we learned that they are responsible for eating 70% of the native fish population. We came across a few in the coral, and Scott was able to spear a huge one. The other two were too deep down and pretty hidden under some coral structures, so we couldn’t get those. We are going to dissect them in a few days, then probably eat them for lunch. Yum!

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Hermit Crab Derby

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Day 10: May 24th 2018, Glover’s Atoll

We woke for the first time by Glover’s Atoll and ate breakfast at 7. I think we all agree tat Marie Sharp knows how to do condiments. Ya’ll should look up the brand. Then we started to look at the technique we’d we using for our 1st project at Glovers. Essentially we would lay 100 ft of transect tape out, and place our quadrat (basically a squares with a bunch of little squares in it to measures things) out the side of the transect tape every 20 ft. We would then measures something using the squares by asking where each square had the thing we were measuring or didn’t. We did this first with the leaves in the ground of the trails, asking ‘does each square have a leaf or doesn’t it?’. We then moved to the seagrass beds around the island as we looked for worm sand mounds, asking ‘does each square have a worm sand mound or a portion of one in it?’. We found that about 3.8% of the seagrass floor around Glover’s contained some amount of sand worm mound.

We breaked before lunch, and I went around collecting hermit crabs in my hat, naming them George, and testing them for the hermit crab derby we want to have. I also chased several iguanas and even managed to touch the tail of one, not a small feat I am told. I also almost caught a small blue crab but it got away. Let’s just say I feel like I feel like a kid in a candy store here with all the crabs and lizards. After lunch, we walked to a coral graveyard on the island full of largely intact coral skeletons and fragments. The holes present where the polyps (the living organism inside the coral skeleton) used to live. Used my limited hard coral identification knowledge to id several types of hard coral using their skeletons including the Great Star Coral (Montrastraea cavernous) which had extremely large, deep, spaced holes where its large bulbous polyps used to live. I also found the skeleton of what I believe to be a Pillar Coral (Dendrogyra cylindrus) with ridged holes where the polyp used to be. We also saw several benched of coral dotted with polyps holes. The skinny pointed branches were Elkhorn Coral (Acropora palmata) and the the broader plates were Staghorn Coral (Acropora cevicornis). I also saw several otters types including the Rough Cactus Coral (Mycetophylla ferox), the Symmetrical Brain Coral (Pseudodiploria strigosa), the Smooth Star Coral (Solanestra bournoni), and the Maze Coral (Meandrina meandrites),

After getting back from the graveyard, we geared up, got on a boat, and got in the water around two reef patches, on in a protect marine area and one not. At each we used the transect and quadrat technique to look at the the live hard coral coverage on the reef benthos. After we finished collecting data, we snorkeled around for a bit. We observed a small Spiny Sea Urchin and a
Spotted Moray Eel in addition to several colorful fish. I observed several varieties of hard coral including several different types of brain coral, often incrusting over rocks and in some yellow color. I also observed a small yellowish Maze Coral alone on the reef benthos. There was even a live Staghorn Coral about 2 feet tall surrounded by what looked like fire corals. Sadly, the ground was also littered with dead one and broken branches.

After we got back, we ate dinner, got out things inside (due to rain), and then had lectures for Green Algae, Soft Corals, and the Future of Coral Reefs. We also discovered that hermit crabs like coconut. After that, we were off to bed (after I bothered some of the Blue Crabs).

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Day 10: I Miss Adrienne

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This morning started with breakfast, which was a nice change from birdwatching. Breakfast was delicious. All the cooks we’ve had on this trip have been great.

We then started practicing using our quadrats and transect tape (PVC pipe and rope grids and measuring tape). We first used them on land to measure leaf cover (at first we were going to measure crab holes, which there are a ton of, but they were all off the path, they’re mostly used by blue land crabs).

Next, we practiced in the nearby seagrass measuring the benthos (the ground, but underwater) cover of worm sand mounds. I found a few mangrove tree crabs on the posts of the dock which aren’t mangroves obviously but are effectively pretty similar when you’re a crab.

After lunch, we went to the fossil coral graveyard. There were just mounds of fossilized corral everywhere that we tried to identify. It’s crazy that these fossilized corrals that are millions of years old are still identifiable as species. This spot is supposed to be Adrienne’s favorite, so we were all really sad she wasn’t there. Scott did try to channel Adrienne today, but I think he only got to saying benthos about 4 times instead of the 7-sometimes we predicted Adrienne would say it.

We later went out to a patch reef farther away from our island. We used the transect tap and quadrat to measure the cover of live hard corals within a protected area and then outside of it. We got to see a much of cool fish, an eel, a few squids, one of which was maybe an inch and a half long and so cute, some sea urchins, a sea cucumber, but sadly no crustaceans. I think they were probably all under the corals where I couldn’t quite see or hiding in plain sight like decorator crabs.

After all our snorkeling, one of the coast guard guys gave us some fresh coconuts that were amazing. I ground up the inside with this fancy coconut grinder after drinking all the juice. I then discovered that the hermit crabs eat coconut. They were all hanging by the coconut grinder. When I gave them coconut they would get super possessive and aggressive towards the other crabs, then put the meat gently in the mouths.

I meant to post all these blog posts today, but the internet was out this morning because of the big storm we had last night. Then this evening, the internet was out again so apparently, I’m back to extremely late blog posts. In other news, I didn’t get burned by the sun today!

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Day 9: Under the Shade I Flourish

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We left the Tropical Education center early this morning to head to Glover’s Reef. When we arrived on the coast, we got on a boat to ride out to Glover’s. The view from the boat was spectacular. I loved seeing the islands slip away into the horizon. 

We arrived at the station in time for lunch (which was delicious) and then immediately went snorkeling. We saw lots of great creatures and it was cool snorkeling for the (mostly) first time. (I think I’ve been snorkeling before, but I don’t really remember it.) Of course, now, I get to become an expert. We saw a baby nurse shark, lots of corals and fish, some conch shells with the conchs in them, and a Caribbean spiny lobster. The lobster (my taxon now is crustaceans) was hiding under some coral, we were able to spot it because of its long spiny antennae.

I definitely had a few sunburn spots when we got out of the water. There always seem to be a few spots you failed to apply sunscreen. It’s also pretty hot here, along with the bright sun. I’m definitely feeling the phrase on the Belize flag “Sub Umbra Floreo” (which my brother would despise the presence of, btw good luck on your AP test bro) but I’m excited to get out in the water and do some research.

Back on the island, we found a ton of Caribbean hermit crabs.

We decided to name them all George. Their size range was incredible: from the size of a fingernail to just over the size of a fist. There were also a bunch of other small crabs hiding in holes along the pathways. I think they may be blue land crabs. We definitely did see one big blue land crab. It was hiding under a log and had a slight blue tint identical to the pictures I found online

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Day 8: The Cave of the Stone Sepulcher

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We got up early this morning to leave Las Cuevas. It was really cool to hear the earlier birds since we were up earlier than we had been for birding. We drove out of Las Cuevas around 6:30 to head to ATM cave. Along the drive, we saw some cormorants on a river we crossed, last birds for my taxon on the trip! ATM is the shortened Mayan name for the cave, Actun Tunichil Muchnal It’s this super amazing cave that has a lot of Mayan artifacts and preserved skeletons.Image result for crystal maiden atm

You can’t bring cameras in, so I have an excuse for not having pictures. It was really cool to do ATM because I did it last year with my family. I was going through the cave with everyone else and I was definitely less surprised as we went along, but I still really enjoyed the adventure. It’s lots of fun to climb across rocks in the dark in cold mountain water and see dead people apparently.

After ATM, we drove to the tropical education center where we stayed the night and also took warm showers which were amazing. I definitely missed having hot water to wash with. Also, we have internet here. It was simultaneously nice and annoying to be able to access the internet again, it’s definitely been nice to be completely unplugged, especially because we’ve been busy enough not to feel bored without it.

The last thing we did today was a night tour of the Belize Zoo. This zoo is unlike any American zoo. You can touch and feed a lot of the animals and generally get way closer to them. I got to feed a tapir which was awesome. I love their big awkward trunk noses. We also saw a spectacled owl and a ferruginous owl. The ferruginous owl was so tiny, maybe only a hand length long, which I didn’t realize despite their being on my taxon sheet.

Tomorrow we’re heading to Glover’s Reef early again. Time for team surf and the infinite struggle to avoid sunburn.

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