Hi all, it’s Faith with Day 2 updates from the Belize trip!!!

Today we woke up and hit the ground running. We had delicious banana pancakes that reminded me of the ones I make back home, and then some Black Iguanas, Ctenosaura similis, watched us prep for out first snorkel.

For our first snorkel, we saw lots of patch reefs, soft corals, hard corals, and many reef fish. From this dive, my favorite thing was the Christmas tree worms that we found burrowed in brain coral. We had lots of fun watching them pop in and out of their burrows. Our dive safety expert, Ruth, also let us hold a Queen Conch Snail!!! Some other interesting finds were pufferfish, a corallamorph, a yellow stingray, and lionfish. I was disappointed that I didn’t see my taxa, but that disappointment dissipated when we started our next activity– quadrats.

What is a quadrat you ask? Well, it is a “handy tool you can use for many things.” I’m not actually sure what it does yet, but it is a square PBC pipe tool with a grid-square net inside. And you’ve got to “belieze” the hype that comes with constructing your own quadrat. It truly makes you a marine biologist.

After lunch, we grabbed our clipboards and “willingly”  (100% not persuaded by the kids) voted to go into the M.O.D.  With our clipboards and fins in hand, all 18 of us RAN through seemingly endless mangroves with swarms and swarms and swarms of mosquitos to our watery safehaven. I got lucky and made it through with maybe 10 or so bites, but many have it much, much worse.

But the buggy adventure was worth it. My partner Maegan and I  attempted to complete the scavenger hunt on our clipboards, but we got sidetracked searching for our taxa. Again, I was distraught over the lack of echinoderms until I saw a broken sea biscuit (Genus Clypeasteroida). I knew that if their were empty sea urchin skeletons, then there were live ones somewhere nearby! I ended up seeing two live Sea biscuits, but many more calcite skeletons… (there were rumors of brittle stars and donkey dung sea cucumbers but I didn’t see them). The sea biscuits were not doing too much, they were sitting on their own or under coral.

Then the time came for us to stop swimming around the reef and run through the mangroves (or so we thought). In reality, we ended up snorkeling back to the wet lab. Our dive back featured another stingray, a nurse shark, and fire sponges growing in the seagrass beds. I also found a plastic bottle with a crab inside! (Don’t worry, I recycled the bottle).

No lizards to report today except for a brown anole Anolis sagrei  and of course the previously mentioned iguanas!!! Til’ tomorrow!!!

Quote(s) of the day:

“Vote mangroves and we won’t send the crabs into your rooms tonight”

*Pointing at a dead Sea Biscuit* “It’s a fossilized sea star!!!”