Daily Blog 12
For the first time we didn’t go out on the boat to snorkel because we worked on our poster this morning for our sea urchin and hard coral project. Since we all can’t work on the poster at once because space is limited, I fell asleep on the hammock. I took around 3 short naps, which was great. I worked on the title, writing “MP-Yay for Reefs” and later we presented the poster to Scott.
After lunch we completed some of our lecture topics, and we left to go to the shallow sea grass bed. It was really hot from the sun, so the mangrove soil was just mushy, warm and disgusting. However, after walking deeper into the seagrass bed and seeing all the conches, sea anemones, and sea snails, I got very excited. I finally swam past the sea grass where I saw a nurse shark! It was swimming away from me, but I still got to see it for a few seconds before it swam away.
I swam into the corals and I was so happy. The water had cooled down to a more comfortable temperature and I picked up a few crabs, a few brittle stars, and a sea urchin. I also got to swim with a school of fish, which reminded me of the opening scene of Lilo and Stich. I was lost track of time and where I was, and I felt so calm snorkeling among all the fish around me. I realized that I loved the ocean a lot, and I regretted not bringing my camera with me to document this moment. Even though I didn’t take any pictures, I still had a blast swimming through coral, admiring the biodiversity around me, and looking between corals for creatures- in fact, I saw a gigantic lobster. I only got to see its head, but it was about 60 cm long. While swimming back to Glover’s, we saw another nurse shark. It was way smaller at around 40 cm long and I only saw it swimming away from me. It swam underneath Veronica!
After dinner we were sitting by the docks looking at the sunset, and while walking to the end of the docks, Scott found a barracuda! It was around 70cm long, and it was slowly swimming under the docks and it didn’t seem like it was hunting. We also saw two southern sting rays swimming underneath us in the docks as well. I only got to see them when they were swimming away from us. Even though all the piscivorous fish I saw today were swimming away from me and only got to see them for a few seconds, I’m still glad I got to see them.
