So today we went to the back reef for a very brief period in order to essentially say goodbye. I felt very sad swimming through the shallow patchy reef, realizing I won’t be on a reef until next year. I said goodbye to the stony corals. But as a last gift, I got to see four amazingly large queen triggerfish, and then I was content.

We traipsed through the shallow flats for a spell to find some interesting critters and organisms from our taxon assignments. Some of my favorite critters were the large hermit crab, the mantis shrimp, blue crab, and sargassum algae.

Then came the lion fish dissection. We caught a total of four lionfish. We weighed the lionfish, measured total length and standard length, had the spines cut off by Adrienne, measured the gape width and height, and then dissected the fish. Specifically, we wanted to look at stomach contents, weigh the fatty parts of the fish, and then sex the fish. My group had trouble finding the gonads, so we couldn’t sex the fish.

After that, we went to Southwester Caye for a fun excursion and then packed up and headed to bed.