2016

Day 13: Lobster Fest

Leave a comment

DSCN1403

Started out the day with some good old community service. We went to a rocky beach on the other side of the island outside the reef crest to pick up trash and debris that’s washed ashore. It was actually quite depressing how much of it there was. I could pick any spot and sit down and spend over 30 minutes picking up trash only in arms’ reach. All of us were out there for an hour and picked up over 30 kgs of trash, yet I don’t know if we made a significant impact.

In the afternoon, we measured some coral. To get to them we had to run through the “mangroves of death” on half of the island. Adrienne and Scott calls it that because in past years it’s been completely infested with mosquitoes. Even though this year wasn’t bad at all I still got bit quite a bit. Saw a reef hermit crab today. They are different from the land hermit crabs thats all over the island, bigger too.

At night we went out for a night snorkel. Saw a lot of lobsters. There were a bunch of spiny lobsters out, more than I’ve ever seen before. Some of them were in pairs. I couldn’t tell if they were mating or fighting. They can shoot themselves so far with one flick of their tail, it’s super impressive. We also saw the elusive slipper lobster. It looked really weird, almost like a really large bug. Everyone turn off their dive lights for a bit. The darkness revealed all the bioluminescent animals hiding in the sea grass. It almost looked like a greenish static on a black screen. Really awesome.

-Randy

Uncategorized

Day 13: Clean up time

Leave a comment

In the morning, we did a mini beach clean-up…and analyzed the trash of course. In an hour of clean-up, we collected over 90 lbs. of marine debris (trash). By mass there was by far the most plastic. I hadn’t been expecting the incredible amount of Styrofoam that washes up on the beach. There were some pretty crazy items also like a melted my little pony, a Barbie leg, a toy soldier, and a bunch of shoes. The craziest part is that beach is cleaned up a bit every week and we hardly made a dent in all of the trash there.

We went to another section of back reef to measure corals again. I did see a corkscrew anemone again. I didn’t see any other of my taxa today.

And then… we did a night snorkel. It was pretty short but I could tell everything is so different on the reef at night. It’s thrilling and a little nerve wracking. You can only see in your beam of flashlight and everyone kicks each other in the face. It is a whole other world, where you get to see the creatures you wouldn’t see otherwise (slipper lobster, squid, tiger-tail sea cucumber. All I wish is that I would have had a brighter flashlight to see even more.

2016

(Nakian) May 29: Trash x Beach

Leave a comment

The beach of the Middle Caye where waves hit seemed clean from the glance. Gray and white field of coral grave made calming splash as the wave slowly crashed. However, the seemingly pristine beach was bearing bits and pieces of human trash when we saw it with the agenda of cleaning the beach. Plastic bottles, nets, ropes, toothbrush, and deformed my little pony lingered around the crevasses and under the porous coral skeletons. But most alarming pieces were the brittle plastics that crumbled as we picked them carelessly. Our civilized world would not tolerate these plastic powders enter our body. However these crumbles will flow back into the ocean with the tide and latch onto any animals that might consume them unknowingly and eventually end up in our own as we eat them. Standing on that beach I pictured a futuristic one where there are more trash than water and the sky was thick with gas as we have dug up everything with value from the ground and thrown up in the air and waters after a day’s use.

DSCN2679
In the afternoon we went through the mangrove to dive in another patch reef. The water was hot like a bathtub. There were some healthy corals but many of the patches were covered in brown algae. Thinking of how algae compete with corals, seeing so many of my taxa wasn’t so joyful. I was able to find a species of brown algae I haven’t seen before. Otherwise I saw massive number of Turbinaria and Dictyota covering the structures underwater.

DSCN2672

Uncategorized

Day 12

Leave a comment

My greatest accomplishment of today was conquering my inability to swim to depths. This day was undoubtedly the most physically demanding we have had so far. In the morning, we took the boat to the fore reef, outside of the bounds of the atoll. This meant that the water was much choppier than previously. I was worried that I would get sea sick, as the last time I was on a boat, I definitely did. In the end, I was one of the few that didn’t end up feeling bad at all.
The fore reef was amazing. It was in a completely different scale from everything that we have previously seen. According to Adrienne, the deepest part that we went to was about fifty feet. Of course we didn’t free dive that deep but we did in some of the medium depths. I was really excited about how much I improved from the first time that we entered the water. By the end of the day, I could make it down the bottom in places that were much deeper than I ever expected from myself.
I continued to see soft corals all over the reef. At this point, I don’t that the composition of this particular community dramatically changes over the different areas that we have been too. I am consistently seeing this community dominated by Gorgonia ventalina in every location.
While I don’t know what we are doing tomorrow, I think that it involves marine debris. This will be a good transition into more conservation-focused issues. I also can’t believe how few days we have left. As per usual I feel simultaneously prepared and unprepared. We shall see how the last couple of days go. I’m sure they will be just as amazing.
.

Uncategorized

Outer reef and back reef adventures, Day 12

Leave a comment

This morning we loaded up the boat really early and travelled a short distance to the reef crest and fore reef near Middle Caye. I took Dramamine an hour before we left and I will spare you the wait and just tell you that I in fact felt queasy out on the ocean. Once we got to the first site, we all got off and it was quite deep, around 50 feet. I was able to dive all the way down and stay long enough to get some really cool photos. After that we moved to the reef crest, where we saw a few stingrays and an eagle ray (which was humongous!) I saw a new coral, Agaricia tenufolia and also spotted quite a bit of the Orbicella faveolata and O. annularis, as well as Montastrea cavernosa.

I tried to be the last person on the boat, but even then I still felt crappy due to the swells. We headed to the second site and jumped in. All of a sudden I hear people exclaiming that there was an Acropora palmata! This coral has been nearly wiped out in the Caribbean due to White Band disease and so I had really wanted to see one. I think I saw about six different colonies during this snorkeling adventure. I can only imagine how magnificent the reefs must have looked over one hundred years ago when A. palmata was a dominant reef builder that loomed over the reef like trees in a rainforest.

I was happy to get back to shore and immediately collapsed into my bed with peanut M&M’s, plantain chips, and oreos all by my side. That afternoon we went over our results from the reef health assessment experiment (coral cover and urchin data). Then we explored the backreef and that was really awesome. I saw so many interesting things, such as a coral with a tumor, a recently dead skeleton of a Siderastrea siderea that was of mysterious origin, and another giant lobster. Scott and our water safety officers were also simultaneously catching lionfish. We caught four and at the end of the week we are going to measure them and then prepare and eat them.

I feel very tired at the moment, most likely from all the swimming from today. Au revoir.

Acropora palmata
Acropora palmata Location: Forereef
Forereef coral
Eusmilia fastigiata
Agaricia tenufolia
Agaricia tenufolia
Colpophyllia natans
Colpophyllia natans
Uncategorized

Day 12: Shallow Surprises, Deep Mysteries

1 Comment
Stingray located in shallow backreef
Stingray located in shallow backreef
A small portion of the potentially massive elkhorn coral (acropa palmetta). It's difficult to find these guys alive nowadays due to a disease that nearly wiped them out in the Caribbean
A small portion of the potentially massive elkhorn coral (acropa palmetta). It’s difficult to find these guys alive nowadays due to a disease that nearly wiped them out in the Caribbean

I think I’m beginning to realize why people are so obsessed and interested on corals, which on the outside look like colorful pieces of rock. Not only are these rocks filled with living polyps, but they also are sensitive to changes to things like temperature, depth, light, and ocean salinity. One thing I saw was how the composition of corals changes dramatically with a few feet of depth change along a gradual slope on our deep-sea dive to the fore-reef. Towards the shallows, you find aerodynamic, small, floppy corals that can stand the power of the waves, while the deeper corals are larger in magnitude, forming magnificent mounds.

 

We took a second dive in a shallow reef bed called the back reef, where in just four feet of water you can find an incredible diversity of animals and plants, ranging anywhere from coral polyps, to anemones, to stunning reef fishes, to lionfishes, to giant stingrays, to giant barracudas. This incredible diversity is due to the placement of this reef in Glover’s Atoll. Think of an atoll as a ring of corals with wind blowing on one side of it. Depending on the orientation with respect to the wind, you can get completely different colonies of coral reefs with different compositions and abundances of other creatures.

 

Unfortunately, even after going through two extremes of reefs, I couldn’t find even one jellyfish or jellylike creature. I’m wondering what about the rich nature of the reefs makes jellyfish life so difficult. Jellyfish tend to proliferate in areas of high nutrients. If what my colleague’s lecture on nutrient cycling on the reefs is correct, then the lack of available nutrients in a diverse ecosystem like a coral reefs would prevent growth of jellyfish in the area. So far, the jellyfish I’ve spotted where either photosynthetic jellies like the Cassiopea species that lived in the shallows near the mangroves, or by accident like the mangled box jellyfish.

 

Well, either way, I’ve got some neat shots of things outside of my taxon group, and I hope you enjoy them when I upload them!

2016

Day 12: Open Ocean Adventures

Leave a comment

I might finally appreciate the vastness of the ocean. This may sound obvious, and I’ve always known that the ocean was huge, but I don’t think I ever really understood what that meant. This morning we went to the fore reef, which was far deeper than anywhere I’ve swam before. Although the water was crystal clear, I couldn’t see the bottom in many places, and in most directions there was nothing but blue for as far as I could see. It hit me that although I was awestruck by the apparent limitlessness of this ocean, I could only see a tiny speck of the ocean on a globe. I know I’ll never fully understand how large the ocean is, but at least now I have some perspective on its immensity.

Eagle ray

We saw many incredible species today. On the fore reef, we saw many large rays, including a spotted eagle ray that was easily longer than I was. We also saw some large, highly endangered elk horn coral. After lunch we snorkeled out to the back reef and saw a large barracuda and caught several invasive lionfish. I didn’t see any tunicates, but I did find nearly all the calciferous red algae species I had researched. Tubular thicket algae and Amphiroa fragilissima were quite common on the sea floor, as they were in the unprotected patch reef yesterdat. I also found crustose coralline algae covering some patches on the reef framework, and a few Galaxura Rugosa plants as well.

2016

Day 11: Sea Urchins and Shooting Stars

Leave a comment

Today we took a boat out to snorkel a little farther from the station. We visited two patch reefs, one in the Marine Protected Area and one outside of it. At each reef, we measured stony coral and macroalgae cover to learn about the reef’s health.   In addition, we collected sea urchins at each site, to learn about their relative size and abundance. Urchins are important for reefs because they feed on macroalgae, but they also bore into stony corals. If they become too abundant they can do more harm than good and fragment the reef framework.

We haven’t finished our data analysis yet, but some differences were immediately apparent. The stony corals in the marine protected area were much larger and denser, and the sandy patches between corals were often bare. In the unprotected area, large stony corals more spread out and the reef was dominated by soft corals. Most of the area we surveyed was sand rather than reef. These areas were full of sea grass and red algae, contrasting sharply with the open areas of the protected reef. I still haven’t seen a tunicate, but I saw several species of red algae. The most common, tubular thicket algae and Amphiroa fragilissima, covered the sea floor in the unprotected area.

DSCN1479

This evening we put a light out under the dock, hoping to attract some interesting species. We only attracted minnows and shrimp, so eventually we turned off the light and looked at the stars instead. Lying on our backs, watching shooting stars, was easily my favorite part of today. We usually keep pretty busy, and it was so nice to have the chance to step back and fully appreciate this beautiful place in which we live.

Uncategorized

Snorkel Day + Sea Cucumbers

Leave a comment

Hi everyone! What a day! This morning we learned about reef zonation and took a boat ride outside the calm waters of the reef crest and into the higher energy fore reef to explore the organisms (in particular the coral) outside the atoll. There I spied some small reef urchins (Echinometra viridis) buried in the crevices among the large coral. Amazingly, we also got to see a couple larger marine creatures out in the fore reef. We all watched in wonder as an enormous spotted eagle ray glided along the benthos and a nurse shark navigated its way through the coral.

A large spotted eagle ray spotted in the fore reef
A large spotted eagle ray spotted in the fore reef

Our afternoon time in the water was spent on the shallow back reef much closer to the island. This area was just as interesting as the fore reef to me, and I got to hold several donkey dung sea cucumbers (Holothuria mexicana) that were about a foot long and on the sand among the sea grass on the edges of coral. The back reef was also neat because I got to swim alongside many schools of fish. While we were at the back reef, we also managed to spear some lionfish, an invasive species from the Indo-Pacific that consume many native species of fish, to study and make ceviche out of later on. I can’t wait to see how that will go! 🙂

The underside of a donkey dung sea cucumber (Holothuria mexicana) found in the back reef
The underside of a donkey dung sea cucumber (Holothuria mexicana) found in the back reef
Uncategorized

Day 12: Fore reef, back reef

Leave a comment
DSCN1293
Fore reef diversity with Orbicella annularis

To start off this morning we ventured outside of the atoll’s lagoon to the fore reef. The fore reef is the outer edge of the reef and has the highest diversity of any reef zone. However, the fore reef also has the highest wave energy and is much deeper than the lagoon or back reef. The boat ride to the drop zones was pretty choppy, which was a bit of a challenge for some people, but most people were able to enjoy the reef once they got off the boat, and we didn’t have any vomiting.

I found it harder to see details on the fore reef because it was deeper and I couldn’t dive far enough down, but I was still able to see interesting aspects of the fore reef. There were bigger fish than in the lagoon, and I believe that the diversity of fish species may have been greater as well. The coral on the fore reef was also amazing because it had more space to grow, so the colonies were much larger. We even saw some Acropora palmata colonies, which is a species of coral that used to be a dominant reef builder but recently saw enough colony death to make it endangered. I also enjoyed seeing Acropora cervicornis because it has distinct white tips with an apical polyp that is much larger than the rest of the coral’s polyps. I learned about A. cervicornis in a class that I took last semester, so it was cool to be able to see it in person.

While we were on the fore reef we also saw a huge ray swimming across a sandy area and a nurse shark that followed our group for a while as we snorkeled alongside the reef crest.

The huge ray we saw
A huge ray swimming along the ocean floor (Photo creds: Anna)

In the afternoon we were able to go out on the back reef by Middle Caye. The water was around three feet deep, making it difficult to navigate, but we were able to get closer to the sea floor than we had been able to before. This was especially beneficial for viewing green algae, as they flourish in areas with high sun and sand. I saw a number of species of Udotea, Caulerpa, and Penicillus all in close proximity. These three species were all found on the sea floor in sandy areas or on dead corals that had accumulated a large amount of sediments. Some species of Halimeda were also found in sandy areas on the sea floor, but some were growing in crevices found on corals. The Halimeda on the floor were taller and had smaller segments, whereas the species on corals were more clumped and had larger segments

DSCN1372
Caulerpa and Penicillus on back reef

The back reef had the first lionfish that we were able to spear. While on Middle Caye, we aren’t permitted to eat any fish that we catch other than lionfish, because they are invasive. Tomorrow we will be taking measurements of the four lionfish that we caught and then we’ve been promised lionfish ceviche, which sounds delicious!

Rice University