May 24, 2019

Today, we spent the morning collecting data in two coral reef locations. Liz and I used a similar underwater language today to communicate. We were recording points with live coral or sediment, so cupping our hand into a “c” meant live coral and crossing our index and middle fingers meant sediment.

Exploring the reef after our data collection was incredible. I spotted many fire coral, mostly branching fire coral (Millepora alcicornis) but also some blade fire coral (Millipore complanate).

Later, we returned to the sea to scour an area of seagrass for critters that we could bring in to examine more closely – no hydrozoans or jellyfish were found, but we did gather some other amazing finds, including an octopus, two fire worms, a West Indian sea egg urchin, a sun anemone, and many more. My favorite are the conchs because they’re shells are beautiful, and they have strange little eyes on long eyestalks.