I can’t believe that this trip is already coming to an end. It seems like just yesterday we were 16 people crammed into a 14 passenger van, filled with excitement and ready to begin our adventure.

We spent today wrapping up a variety of projects from the week. In the morning, we went out onto the fore reef to collect samples to take back to the wet lab. We found many types of algae, crustaceans, mollusks, and other species. As far as red algae, I saw tubular thicket algae, Galaxura rugosa, and Amphiroa fragilissima. I also found crustose coralline algae growing on the back of a hermit crab. It looks like I’m not going to find a tunicate on this trip.

In the afternoon we dissected the lionfish we caught earlier in the week. Ours was a male with a surprisingly large fish in its stomach. After the dissection, we made lionfish ceviche.

This evening we visited a resort on a nearby island. It was really interesting to hear the stories of other visitors on the island, and we got to watch a spectacular sunset from the dock.