Tag Archives: glovers reef

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Riding the waves! (5/24)

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Hey y’all!

Today was another big travel day! We left the Tropical Education Center in the morning after a lovely breakfast and hit the road heading to Belize City. Along the way, we saw the landscape change from dry savannah to boggy mangroves, trees that have really tall roots that help them live in brackish (between salt and fresh) water.

We stopped at Old Belize, an marina just outside of Belize City that functions as a water park, museum, and inn and restaurant spot. After we ate our lunch in the cafeteria area next to the pool and checked out the gift shop, we boarded the van and drove to Princess Marina, where our boat, the Manta Ray, awaited. The boat ride was absolutely stunning, and I have never seen water so blue! When we got to the reef crown, the ride got so rocky I lost contact with my seat a few times!

We arrived at Glover’s Reef at 4 pm and got an orientation about the station from the manager, Mr. Kenneth. He told us about how Glover’s is a heritage site that is used by the Wildlife Conservation Society, the Belize Fisheries Department, and the Belize Coast Guard. He showed us to our dorms, which are literally a beachside dream! Tomorrow, we’re gonna snorkel for the first time this trip, so hoping to get some really great pictures, especially for my animal group: Damselfishes!

 

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Day 11: Uh oh Barracuda!

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Today we started an experiment. We met as a group and decided we would like to know more about parrotfish and what they are actually eating on the reef. We were curious if they just graze on the algae, are taking bites of coral, feeding on grass, etc.. We assigned each group of partners a specific species of surgeonfish to follow around the reef and observe what they’re eating. We did a fish following assay where we chose a fish to follow around and observe for 5 minutes. We started the experiment by visiting the patch reef again. Here Zoe and I looked for stoplight parrotfish and observed them. Among the way we saw a few more sting rays.

In the afternoon we continued our experiment by visiting two more reefs. Zoe and I saw more male parrotfish at this second location which are more blue and colorful than the grey and reddish females. At the third location as soon as we got in the water there were multiple Barracudas. Some looked to be at least 4 ft long. As we were swimming around watching for our parrotfish we noticed that one of them was following us. We swam up to Dr. Evans and he told us that they’re actually attracted to the way Zoe kicks because she produces a lot of bubbles. As we were swimming with Dr. Evans, we came face to face with another Barracuda. We all heard Zoe’s scream underwater. Unfortunately no eel sightings today again. 

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Day 10: Snorkeling

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Hi! Today was our first full day at Glover’s reef! We started the morning by doing some test snorkeling to a nearby patch reef off the dock to make sure everyone’s gear was working. Around the reef we saw so many species of fish and so many other types of organisms. We saw parrotfish, angelfish, surgeonfish, damselfish, and many more. We also saw a southern stingray hanging around the dock. The nurse sharks love to hang around the dock too!

In the afternoon we took a boat out to a spot called the aquarium to look for our taxa. We saw many more fish, a nurse shark, pufferfish, and many more. However we didn’t see any eels. We needed the night watching the sunset as a group and hanging out on the dock by the water!

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Day 9: Arriving at Glover’s Reef!

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We finally got to sleep in today, with a late start of 8:00 AM! We drove back to Belize City to get lunch and get to our boat that would take us to Middle Caye and Glover’s Reef Research Station.

Our dock was behind a casino, which was a bit surprising, but the boat ride was amazing. The initial portion of the trip was super fun, as we sped through the waters.

We saw the ocean turn from a murky green to a clouded dark turquoise to a beautiful vibrant blue. At one point, we couldn’t see any land around us at all!

When we finally left the reef edge, the waters become much more rough and the boat felt like it was being tossed around. At many points it felt like we got a bit of airtime from how high we would get thrown up!

Once we got to Glover’s Reef, it became a lot more calm, but this time with super clear waters filled with hundreds of patch reefs. We even saw a brown pelican repeatedly dive into the water!

Middle Caye itself is beautiful too, and so is the research station itself.

We caught the tail end of the sunset on the dock, which was stunning. Can’t wait to spend the next week here!!

All in all, it was a pretty light travel day. Excited for what the reef has to offer!

Ian C

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5/25 on the hunt for coral

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Today we had our first snorkel!! Our morning snorkel was pretty chill. We swam out to the reef patch and just explored and practiced snorkeling. I saw a lizard fish and parrotfish and LOTS of hard corals! After lunch, we took a boat out to this other reef patch called the aquarium for how big and clear the water is. Here I saw a nurse shark, a yellow sting ray, a sea cucumber, hard corals and so many damsel fish. I also saw a large terminal male stoplight parrotfish, which I followed around for a bit. A lot of fish change gender as they age to balance the population, and when they do they can change their appearance to look completely different. Because of this, there are so many variations of what different fish can look like, so it’s hard to ID them. This parrotfish appeared to be eating the coral or scraping algae off if the coral to eat. Parrotfish are known to have very strange diets. They appear to eat anything from coral to algae to rocks. They frequently poop all of this out which actually create most of the “sand” that we see. In the next few days, I definitely want to follow some more parrotfish around to see them eat and poop. Then we went over to another site, where I saw even more hard corals and fish! I think this location by far had the most hard corals. All the locations seemed to have mustard hill coral, branch fire coral, blade fire coral grooved brain coral, finger coral,  possibly massive starlet coral. The last location also had symmetrical brian coral and smooth star coral, although these are difficult to identify for me, so it’s just my best guess.

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Day CoastNINE (Coastline): We Made it to Glover’s Reef!

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A great day for another bus ride, stock up, and move to Glover’s Reef! We got a ferry ride to the atoll, which was so beautiful for the parts I was awake for. Ablaze skies, intense wind, and cool sea mist. And three whole hours of it too! Ian did get a little sunburned though, and Elise and Noelle got great watch tans.

Featuring my hair getting everywhere

As soon as we landed, it was so beach. After a nice tour around the area, a meeting with Clivus, the compost toilet, and dodging the hermit crabs that littered the beach, it was time for dinner! But first, as we unloaded, all of us tried to crack open this old coconut on the beach floor. After a lot of hitting, we finally got some water from it, which was really salty and scrumptious. On top of that, dinner was super yummy, consisting of rice, beans, and vegetables. We then sat on the dock for hours and hours, talking, basking in the setting sun, and taking pictures. 

hermit crab haul!

Finally, it was time for my taxon presentation on parrotfish, as well as two really interesting talks by Zoe and Claire C. on soft coral and parrotfish evolution respectively. Can’t wait to see what we find in the reef tomorrow!

(No parrotfish yet, but definitely tomorrow)

2022

D-7 Lion Fish Ceviche, Finally!

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Hi everyone!

Today marks our last full day at Glover’s and our last day of snorkeling!


Being our last day of Glover’s means that we have to begin packing and be ready to become immersed in a completely different ecosystem: the rainforest. Yet, I am getting ahead of myself, before we can start something new we have to finish our older projects. This was precisely the goal of today’s snorkel. We visited another non-marine protected area to collect our fourth data set. At first I was a bit skeptical about whether we would be able to collect the data with the weather conditions as it looked fairly windy. Yet, thankfully our skills have highly improved! After having gathered our data for the remaining site we all got to enjoy a fun snorkel.

It was during this second snorkel that I got to see a grey triggerfish. It was hiding behind a large patch of coral and it only came out after I swam by. It was a bit larger than I had anticipated, yet its approximate size fits between the size range I encountered during my earlier research on piscivorous fish of Belize. I am glad that I got to see another fish on my taxon ID card, and I hope to get to see the remainder on my next trip to Belize!

Our team also managed to catch yet another lion fish during our leisure snorkel. We see this piscivorous fish nearly at every patch we visit; after all, that seems pretty fitting of an invasive species! This time the lion fish was very small. After dinner we made use of all three fish that were captured during our time here. Yet before eating them we dissected them, gendered them, and removed any contents such as fat, liver and stomach that are commonly not eaten in ceviche.



Then Chef Solomon took over to make the ceviche. Here is a photo of the lion fish ceviche that was made!

2022

D-6 Fossils, trash, & a naked crab?

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Hi everyone!

Much like other days today was great! Early in the morning we got to go to the fore reef which was a little intimidating at first but also super cool! There we got to see a green turtle at the bottom and many, many sea walnuts (which were beyond adorable.) I am so glad we visited although we were only able to stay for a short while due to the weather conditions of the atoll at this time of the year. Even though I loved the experience I will say one thing: I am so grateful I decided to take Dramamine during breakfast. I think I would have felt seasick if I had decided to tough it out!

After we got back to Glover’s we all did a group clean-up of the beach. Together we picked up around 65kg of trash; I’m pretty proud of us! In the process, we also collected data on how much of the trash could be disposed of here at Glover’s and how much would have to be shipped to the mainland to be disposed of. Yet, perhaps the coolest part of our findings is that different areas of the island allow for different efficiency in collecting said trash, therefore if there is limited man power, we found that there are certain areas were effort should be a priority! While cleaning the coast, one member of our team found something that kind of shocked us all:

We are still unsure of how this level of preservation happened but it is so pristine that we were able to identify it as a type of box fish. During this trip I had heard about box fish, yet I didn’t know too much about them as they are omnivores and therefore not part of my taxa, piscivorous fish. Yet, seeing this little guy prompted me to learn a lot more about these fish, and honestly they are really cool!

Making today even better, before dinner we saw a hermit crab switch shells; I thought I would never get to see this, but this trip truly is full of surprises at every turn!

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Lionfish: 4 TFBs: 1

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Another early morning and right onto the boat! We went to two different marine protected areas. After laying out our transects and quadrats and collecting our data on live versus dead coral we did another sea urchin hunt. The first area I was only able to find one dead urchin skeleton, but as a class we got 52 sea urchins and a sea egg named Harry. The second site I had a little better luck, I managed to find one sea urchin, but with it was a bonus brittle star! I also found 2 crabs while searching for urchins but I couldn’t see any of them aside from colors before they scrambled away. Best guess is that they’re either green porcelain crabs, or emerald crab/green clinging crab. I didn’t see any lobsters, but Ruth, one of our water safety officers, found a ton and took some photos on my camera (her photography is miles better than mine!) that I’ll add here after I figure out how the camera works. We also caught another lionfish on this trip out, it’s in the freezer now waiting to be eaten. Everyone is saying we’re going to make ceviche at the end of the week with the fish, I’ve never had it before so hopefully it’s good!

Our post lecture snorkel took us to a reef just a little off of the island, this reef had lots of fish and even a stingray and reef squid! We also saw 4 lionfish around the reef but since they were small they were hard to catch and we didn’t manage to get any of them. Hopefully we’ll have better luck tomorrow. This reef was much more bleached and dead then the other patches we’ve visited, and there was a lot of algae on the sea floor decaying and suffocating the coral with their decomposition. Despite that the living parts of the reef were amazing and the fish were huge! I can’t wait for tomorrow, I’m really hoping conditions are good enough for us to visit the fore reef.

2022

D-5 Barracuda:1, Maggy:0

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Hi everyone!

I’m so glad to say that our team has actually gotten so much better at using our tools out in the field! We went out today to two more coral reef patches and were able to collect data the first time it took 40 minutes and the second time it took 30 minutes, both of which are a great improvement from yesterday’s hour long data collection at a single patch! I was also super glad to see some of the Tunicates Sophie talked about in her taxon lecture last night. Considering how small they are I thought I wouldn’t spot them, but the second patch we visited actually had a ton laying around in many of the corals. Our group also saw and captured a second lionfish today. This one was much smaller than the one collected yesterday. But mostly everyone in the group seems very excited to have lionfish “ceviche.” Regarding our sea urchin collecting we were able to find a lot more than at the patch we visited yesterday! That either means we were at patches today with lots more, or that we are getting better at finding their hiding spots. Today I also happened to (for the first time) slightly rub against some fire coral. It hurt a bit right after I came in contact with it but it got a little more painful once I was out of the water. Thankfully the burning sensation subsided in about half an hour! Another new experience I had today was seeing a barracuda for the first time! It was actually huge and really intimidating. I was kinda shocked by its behavior as well, but I could see how it is fitting of a piscivorous fish! While most fish I have encountered so far on this trip tend to see any of us and turn and swim the other way, when the barracuda and I made eye contact instead of swimming away it began swimming towards me. Let me tell you as soon as I saw that I started swimming the other way! After seeing that barracuda I had no idea I would see another one, but I happened to see yet another at the Glover’s reef gift shop!